Ab-Tastic Ideas

Even though I've been replying to comments, and trying to catch up on everyone else's blogs, I feel like I haven't written forever. But I guess that's because this week has felt so long (and I still have 2 more days to go)- ugh!

Monday night, I went to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game- the Hubs won free tickets from a radio station. We've been to games before, and the team is really good this year (they started with a 23-2 record or something ridiculous like that). However, something went terribly wrong, and our team did not play well at all. The game pretty much sucked, and I was tired, so we left after the 7th inning (at that point the game was 0-7). Oh well, at least we didn't have to pay for the tickets.

Yesterday morning (was it really only yesterday?) I did another 30 minute workout on the elliptical. Instead of doing my abs, I did an upper body strength workout- some biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest and back. It wasn't very long, just 2 sets of 6 different exercises. But it was more than what I've been doing.

This morning I also did an elliptical workout (33 minutes). I haven't done any walking yet, because I like the fact that I can watch some of the 900 hours of Olympics coverage that we have on Tivo (by the way, did anyone catch the women's marathon on Saturday? Wow!). So I'll probably continue with that until the Olympics are over, or until my knee feels better- whichever comes first. I did two sets of my ab exercises- one before the elliptical, and one after. This time I did (each set) 25 regular crunches, 15 side crunches, 15 reverse crunches, and 15 bicycle crunches. I also threw in one set of the Pilates Hundred. It was pretty tough (it used to be no problem), and I had to do it with bent knees. Hopefully as the Challenge goes on, I will be able to do a lot more ab work, instead of short 10 minute bouts.

That gives you an idea of what I am doing for my ab workouts, but many of you want more variety, or something new and different, or something more challenging. So I did a little research, and came up with a few things. The first is this great nugget, the Top 10 Most Effective Ab Exercises. This is a great reference of 10 different ab exercises, with pictures and instructions for each. And wouldn't you know it, my September issue of Women's Health has a cover article promising Flat Sexy Abs! In Just Two Weeks (as if). The moves actually look pretty good, so I may incorporate some of them. If you have time to experiment, you may want to check out Shape.com's Workout Finder feature. They have a whole slew of ab workouts listed. This one has several moves that incorporate a stability ball.

So for those of you who are wondering what to do, hopefully that's enough to get you started. I hope everyone has taken their photos and/or measurements and is progressing nicely. Thanks for all of the updates you've sent so far. Good luck, and keep it up!